The collapse of an interstate highway bridge in Minnesota at rush hour sent a tremor through all of us who rely on bridges to get where we are going. It inevitably makes us wonder how safe bridges are in the Ocean State — which, as its watery name implies, relies on a lot of them.

The answer for Rhode Island is not terribly comforting. The most recent available highway statistics (2005) show that the Ocean State leads the country in the percentage of its bridges (53 percent) that the government deems “deficient” in one way or another. That includes 176 bridges that were found “structurally deficient,” the same black mark that inspectors had given the bridge in Minneapolis before its collapse.

By contrast, fewer than 4 percent of the bridges in number-one-ranked Nevada are deficient. In New England, Massachusetts ranked 45th (36 percent), Vermont 44th (35 percent) Connecticut 43rd (34 percent), New Hampshire 37th (30 percent) and Maine 36th (29.9 percent). Minnesota, perhaps surprisingly, ranked an impressive fifth, with only 13 percent of its bridges deficient.

Deficient does not necessarily mean dangerous. Still, it is obviously a cause for concern that Rhode Island ranks dead last, says Jerome Williams, director of the state Department of Transportation.

Bridges in Rhode Island are regularly inspected, and all the inspections are up to date, Mr. Williams insists. Moreover, bridges that pose special concerns are inspected even more often — such as the Sakonnet River Bridge, which is undergoing repairs right now after some problems were noticed recently. (That bridge is also scheduled to be replaced by 2009.) Some old bridges need extra attention because they lack “redundancies” — structural features that will keep the bridge safe if other parts of it give way.

The “deficient” label can simply mean a good bridge is old, and was designed before more modern specifications for clearance, redundancies, or other safety features. Or it can mean a bridge tended to suffer some corrosion because of the salt used in the winter to keep it safe for motorists. That’s one reason that, in the same survey that found Rhode Island last, the states that led America with the lowest percentages of deficient bridges tended to be in the booming Sunbelt, where bridges are of a more recent vintage and winters are milder.

The Ocean State’s percentage should improve with the completion of the I-Way, the project creating a safer interchange between Routes 195 and 95 in Providence. Part of the problem here is inadequate funding of highway and bridge maintenance, because so much transportation money is siphoned off for retirement and other very generous employee benefits.

Since Rhode Islanders already pay some of the country’s highest taxes, the problem is not money per se; it is how the money gets spent. The legislature, which mostly controls the state’s purse strings, and governor must shift spending more toward physical-infrastructure construction and maintenance.

Rhode Island gets very low grades in another area. It ranked 47th in the same study in overall performance of its highway and bridge system, meaning it did not get much bang for the buck for the bridge and highway work that was done. “Rhode Island has relatively high costs compared to system condition,” said a new report by the Reason Foundation.

Mr. Williams said the department is undertaking a comprehensive re-evaluation of the way DOT has been doing business during the past several years.

Good! It should be.

We wish him and his colleagues well.